Gov. Scott Walker’s self-described “bold, decisive action” on May 2 to fight chronic wasting disease in Wisconsin’s deer herd struck some folks as a death-bed conversion and many others as a political pitch to convince “Sportsmen for Walker” he hadn’t abandoned them.

Are Walker’s three emergency rules for CWD politically motivated?

Pfft!

You have to ask? Walker is up for re-election in November, and hunters vote. He’s never been shy about playing a hunter in public-service ads since the 2010 deer season, even though he’s never bagged a deer, largely ignored CWD the past eight years and never hunted until spurred by gubernatorial dreams.

Besides, this is a representative democracy, and savvy politicians heed voters’ fears and concerns. As the French politician Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin said in the 1800s: “There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.”

But if Gov. Walker wants to fare better than Ledru-Rollin, he must do more than catch a surging wave. After the 1848 French Revolution failed, Ledru-Rollin spent 20 years in exile and never regained credibility with the working class, which felt betrayed.

True leaders rally people. They tap into the voters’ conscience to inspire action.

And they don’t claim to take “aggressive actions” and a “balanced approach” when their edicts are neither aggressive nor balanced. Yet that’s how Walker described his “new initiatives” for battling CWD.

That doesn’t make those orders bad. All three make sense and deserve support. But let’s not oversell what’s merely rational and prudent, and more calculated than daring.

To recap, Walker directed the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to develop these emergency rules:

Wisconsin’s 376 captive deer/elk farms must “enhance” their fencing. Captive facilities already are enclosed by at least one 8-foot fence. Enhanced fencing requires adding an electric fence, a second 8-foot-high fence or an impermeable physical barrier.

Hunters cannot move a whole deer carcass from a CWD-affected county unless they deliver it to a meat processor or licensed taxidermist. Instead they must quarter it or bone out the meat, and leave the entire spinal column in the county where they killed the deer.

How the rules are imposed and enforced by the DNR and DATCP probably won’t be specified until autumn, or possibly until after November’s election. The governor’s office said the rules ensure “both sportsmen and deer farmers are part of the process of slowing the spread of CWD.”

By Wednesday, however, deer farmers subtly threatened lawsuits while claiming the rules imperil their businesses. Walker quickly signaled he’s willing to discuss grants and taxpayer aid to help them meet the requirements. If he concedes more, he’ll look cowardly.

In fairness to elk and deer farmers — even though many shooting facilities disregard fair-chase hunting principles — Walker’s emergency rules ask little of Wisconsin’s roughly 700,000 deer hunters. He didn’t outlaw deer feeding and baiting statewide, which would mean rescinding the ill-advised law he signed in 2017 to relax baiting/feeding restrictions. Neither did Walker direct the DNR to impose mandatory testing in areas with new CWD cases, or create testing schedules to ensure all counties are regularly checked.

Yes, deer farms prove repeatedly that their industry poses disease risks, especially when trucking deer to new locations. And yes, the state has five CWD-infected shooting preserves still operating in Oneida, Oconto, Waupaca, Shawano and Marathon counties — all well north of Wisconsin’s endemic region. Further, the Marathon County facility, Wilderness Whitetails near Eland, has found 74 CWD cases since 2013, including 49 in 2017.

Even so, Wisconsin has far more CWD-infected deer roaming freely outside fences than circling endlessly inside them. As of Wednesday, the DNR has documented 4,188 CWD cases in wild deer the past 17 years, primarily in our southern farmlands. In contrast, DATCP has detected 250 CWD cases in 19 deer farms since 2001.

The DNR verified a record 600 CWD cases in wild deer in 2017, even though it tested only 9,882 (3 percent) of the 320,039 deer registered by hunters. In fact, the last year the DNR detected fewer than 250 CWD cases was 2011 when it found 239.

Numbers like those apparently motivated Walker to impose his emergency rules May 2. He told Wisconsin Public Radio on Tuesday that increased CWD cases the past six months made it “critically important that we address (the disease) on every front possible.”

If Walker wants hunters to consider him a CWD leader, he should welcome deer farms to challenge him in court. He’d be an overnight hero. He should also open mid-December’s four-day gun-hunt and holidays gun-hunt to either-sex hunting in CWD-affected counties to kill more adult bucks — the deer most prone to CWD.

He should also encourage hunters statewide to test their deer for CWD, and direct the Legislature to reinstate earn-a-buck regulations to reduce the herd where needed. He might even visit John Hagen in Oneida County and Doug Duren in Richland County to ask how he can help their grassroots efforts to fight CWD.

Hagen shot all 10 deer in Oneida County’s surveillance cull in March, which revealed the county’s first CWD case 2 miles from Lincoln County’s first case, which was confirmed in November 2017. Hagen did all the shooting because others nearby declined to help. Walker should ring those folks’ doorbells to urge their help while seeking their votes.

And Duren? He’s encouraging the DNR to install a public kiosk at his farm on State 58 to collect samples for testing. He’s also trying to arrange a $500 dumpster where hunters can toss deer bones after quartering or boning out their deer.

In fact, if Gov. Walker wants to describe himself as bold or unintimidated, he should visit retired DNR biologist Mike Foy to discuss how to actually fight the CWD fire. Foy’s plan would pay hunters substantial bounties for each CWD-positive deer they kill.

And if Walker thinks all that is too much to ask of our governor, he should tell us which fish or wildlife issue in Wisconsin is more pressing than CWD.

Patrick Durkin is a freelance writer who covers outdoors for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Email him at patrickdurkin56@gmail.com.